We’ll be talking guns, money, taxes, and the “war on drugs” used to seize assets from innocent bystander citizens. Dave Workman of The 2nd Amendment Foundation joins us to talk about moves to “Do Something!” now, a.k.a. to save us from the danger of guns out there. And we’ll have our own local CA expert, Chuck Michael, of the CA Rifle and Pistol Association to focus on how fast our CA State legislators are moving to capitalize on the public fear resulting from the horrific tragedy in Newtown, CT this past December.

Richard Rider joins us to talk about the millionaires who are leaving CA because they don’t want to pay 82% taxes on their earnings. Steven Greenhut recently wrote about one such individual, Pro Golfer, Phil Mickelson, and his new 62% tax bracket in CA, but Rider will explain how it’s actually 82%! What happens when the millionaires leave? Yikes.

He’s always loaded for bear, so don’t miss it. Join us live from noon to 2 pm PT on CRNtalk.com as we fill in for the venerable Chuck Wilder who is in recuperation.

The police officer sons of two south Texas law enforcement chiefs who made fighting corruption the cornerstones of their careers have been taken into custody on suspicion of waylaying drug caches coming across the border from Mexico.

Federal agents investigating several border departments west and south of McAllen arrested Jonathan Treviño, the son of Lupe Treviño, sheriff of Hidalgo County, and Alexis Espinoza, the son of Rodolfo Espinoza, Hidalgo’s police chief, the McAllen Monitor is reporting.

For advocates of less-intrusive government, finding the good news in the recent election is like looking on the bright side after your house has been wiped out by a hurricane. You never did like that floor plan, anyway, and this seems like a great opportunity to rethink your lifestyle.

The political storm was particularly fearsome in California. Democrats already are floating trial balloons now that they have gained a legislative supermajority that allows them to pass direct tax increases without GOP support.

But there was some good news, however slim, on the ballot in the long-neglected area of criminal-justice reform. California voters passed, by a 69 percent to 31 percent margin, a measure (Proposition 36) that reforms the state’s notoriously tough three-strikes-and-you’re-out sentencing law.

In 1994, California voters passed Proposition 184, which targeted repeat offenders. Under that law, if a person convicted of two serious or violent felonies commits a third “strike,” it would automatically lead to a life term with no possibility of parole for 25 years. The verdict is out on how much “three strikes” contributed to falling crime rates, but there is little question that California’s strict version led to rising incarceration costs and high-profile instances of injustice.

Unlike any of the other 23 states that passed “three strikes” laws, California imposed the life sentence on offenders whose third conviction was for “any” felony, rather than for a serious or violent one. So we’ve witnessed cases where offenders have received that life term for stealing a piece of pizza, kiting a bad check, and other relatively minor crimes. Click to read more.

Steven Greenhut | August 31, 2012
California city officials typically spare police officers even modest reductions in the pay and pension packages that are a main source of local budget problems, even when the other alternatives are cuts in public services or even municipal bankruptcy.
The common explanation is politicians are afraid of the cop unions’ political muscle come election time. That is true, but disturbing behavior by operatives associated with the Costa Mesa police union paints a much darker picture of the fear such unions instill in local officials. The incident has statewide and even national implications.

How serious are the Legislators, to real pension and retirement healthcare reform for public employees? The two houses have passed and sent to the Gov for signing, AB 2451, which extends the number of years a claim may be filed for a work related fatal injury or illness, from 4 years to 9.
Katy Grimes reports on this bill here.
The Calfire Blog has a softer spin on the bill here.

Why don’t the politicians just say no, and stand up to the abuse of the public trust? Well, many of those who do are facing the wrath and fury of the Police Union.

Members of a handful of Orange County city councils Tuesday told stories of attempts by police unions to bully them into voting for generous labor contracts and said a flood of similar revelations is yet to come.

And,

The common thread, the council members said, was controversial law firm Lackie, Dammeier & McGill, which does labor contract negotiations consulting work for police unions. The law firm had posted on its website a slew of bullying strategies to secure lucrative labor contracts, the Orange County Register reported earlier this month.
Shortly thereafter, the Costa Mesa Police Officers’ Association fired the law firm.

In case you’re lulled or enticed into buying the spin from Jerry Brown or the Legislators who cower when the most powerful and richest of the special interest groups gnash their teeth, here’s a look into our collective future if we don’t turn off their spigot of cash they use to buy, bully, and control our legislators at all levels of government.

Steep budget cuts over the last four years have left Stanton, population 38,000, a shell of a city.

Visitors to Hollenbeck Park will find it fenced off, because the city can no longer afford to water the grass. Children who once played in the sprinkler-like water attraction at Dotson Park will now find it dry. Over at Zuniga Park, volunteers are taking care of maintenance and paying for water.

The city recreation department has been virtually disbanded, with most after-school programs closed. Gone are the days when children nibbled on city-funded snacks at the park. Graffiti is staying up longer because the public works department has been whittled down to three.

At City Hall, staff has been cut to 23 people, who empty their own wastebaskets because the clean-up crew was let go. One employee stays late to vacuum the floors. A part-timer paid through a government program cleans the toilets.

The city of Stanton is planning to possibly close three of its parks to save money on its annual budget.

And Stanton can no longer afford membership in the League of California Cities.

In 2010, when council members were running unopposed, the city canceled the election to save $32,261.

“There’s nothing else we can cut,” Marsh said. “It’s scary. If we laid off every single employee left, it still wouldn’t close the gap.”

Marsh said the city is paying for only the things it is legally required to provide…

“…Every city is in trouble to some extent. Some are just starting to confront it, but we’ve been loud and noisy in trying to fix it all along. I don’t know if that was wise, from a PR-standpoint – but we are going to have a balanced budget.”

The city is focusing its budget knife as a last resort on police and fire spending – the biggest drag on the 2012-13 $16.4 million operating budget.

Police and fire amounts to 77 percent of the city’s general fund. By contrast, the city of Vallejo’s public safety spending hit 80 percent when it declared bankruptcy.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Burbank police officer who blew the whistle on police misconduct is protected by the First Amendment, Public Citizen told the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today. In a petition asking a larger panel of the appellate court to overturn a ruling by three of its judges, Public Citizen argued that if the decision in Dahlia v Rodriguez stands, police officers would not be protected when speaking out about misconduct by fellow officers — and so no officer would speak out.

Beginning in 2007, Angelo Dahlia witnessed fellow Burbank Police Department officers beating, threatening and choking suspects. After he complained within his department, officers threatened Dahlia himself. Shortly after Dahlia disclosed to another law enforcement agency and to his officers association the abuses he witnessed, he was placed on administrative leave and lost pay and a promotional opportunity. In response, Dahlia filed a lawsuit alleging that his First Amendment rights had been violated.

On Aug. 7, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit ruled that Dahlia was not protected by the First Amendment because reporting misconduct is part of his job as a police officer, not an action undertaken in his role as a citizen.

In asking for the case to be heard by an 11-judge panel of the 9th Circuit, Public Citizen argues that the scope of a police officer’s job duties and what speech is protected should be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Public Citizen also warns that the decision by the three-judge panel, if allowed to stand, will deter police officers from speaking out about misconduct within their ranks.

“Courageous police officers like Dahlia are in many circumstances the public’s best or even only available source of information about police corruption and abuse,” said Scott Michelman, an attorney for Public Citizen. “If the case is not reheard, it will exert a powerful chilling effect on officers who might otherwise report official misconduct and abuse.”

By Sean Dunagan, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
Posted on Radley Balko’s site, The Agitator

The war on drugs has claimed innumerable victims. The tens of thousands killed in Mexico, the half a million incarcerated here for nonviolent drug offenses, the taxpayers who have funded it all to the tune of a trillion dollars. But one of the greatest victims of the drug war is law enforcement itself.

I don’t mean the bloated bureaucracy of DEA or the robber barons of the prison-industrial complex. I mean the foundations of civilian law enforcement.

Judge Jim Gray authored Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs. “It was the culmination of his experience as a former federal prosecutor, defense attorney and trial judge.” We’ll speak with Judge Gray about Anaheim, about an important factor in the legal conflicts between the people of the affected neighborhood of Anaheim and the Anaheim Police Department.

Larry Sand of CTEN talks with us about a racket teachers in CA use to hike their pay regardless of whether or not they hike their skills or achievements as teachers.

Katy Grimes of CalWatchDog talks about the investigative reporting she’s done recently, to uncover millions of dollars of stashed away taxpayer dollars. While the State of CA cries poverty and threatens to shut down parks, cut vital services and cut back university and K-12 funding, agencies have been hoarding and doling out millions of dollars, like slush funds.

The recent scandal inside of the State Parks and Recreation Department is no surprise to anyone, but the levels of corruption, schemes and deceit, is. The agency director, Ruth Coleman, resigned. But as she r…

“…Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait…tried his hand at tough-guy rhetoric at a news conference after Tuesday’s violence: “Vandalism, arson and other forms of violent protest will simply not be tolerated in our city. We don’t expect last night’s situation to be repeated but if it should be, the police response will be the same: swift and appropriate.

Of course, we all are against violence, vandalism and arson. Indeed, the mother of one of the men killed by police poignantly called for calm. But I can’t agree that the police response was appropriate.

Tait, who rightly called for an outside investigation of the police shootings, over the objections of other council members, needs to work harder to live up to the promises he made when became mayor. Tait promised to foster a culture of “kindness” in the city. I know he means it, and he told me he is deeply concerned about some police actions.

Police culture

Anaheim’s police culture echoes the old Los Angeles Police Department culture that valued aggressiveness over community policing, and the city administration has shown no willingness to confront it. City police have shot six people this year, five fatally, under varying circumstances (Gadfly’s emphasis).”
and

“Powerful police unions

While Anaheim has a greater need than some other cities to re-evaluate its policing policies, problems with police use-of-force problem are endemic throughout the country and, especially, in California, where police union priorities — i.e., what’s best for officers, not the citizenry — have dominated policy decisions for decades.

Recent news reports show a significant increase in police-involved shootings in many areas of California. Police shootings account for one of every 10 shooting deaths in Los Angeles County, according to a Los Angeles Times report. Videotapes of the encounters often show that the official version of the story is at odds with what really happened. No wonder police agencies spend so much time confiscating video cameras from bystanders, something that should chill every freedom-loving American, whether on the political Left or Right.

The California Supreme Court’s Copley Press vs. San Diego decision in 2006 allows allegations of police misconduct to remain shrouded in secrecy. The public can access complaints against doctors, lawyers and other professionals but, in California, misbehavior by public employees who have the legal right to use deadly force often is off-limits to scrutiny. Because of an exemption in the public-records act, police agencies need not release most details of their reports of officer-involved shootings.

Furthermore, the Peace Officers Procedural Bill of Rights in California’s Government Code gives accused officers such strong protections that officers can rarely be disciplined or fired. The “code of silence” is alive and well in police agencies…”

History: First state to get a POBR (Peace Officers Bill of Rights), effective 01-01-77. The concept originated around 1974. The largest supporter of POBR was the ACLU. Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law.

Of the six victims of Anaheim police-involved shootings this year, five were Latino. In fact, the Anaheim neighborhood where Diaz was shot is almost 90 percent Latino.

At news conferences and in statements to the press, Anaheim police have repeatedly used the term “gang member” in justifications for the recent shootings and subsequent treatment of protesting residents.

Anaheim Police Chief John Welter has said that the firing of bean bags and pepper spray at residents protesting the killing of Diaz was in response to “some known gang members” throwing bottles and rocks at officers.

In a detailed statement released by the Anaheim Police Association on July 24, Kerry Condon, president of the police union, said the following:

“… we live in a dangerous world where there are too many violent gang members like Manuel ‘Stomper’ Diaz and Joel ‘Yogi’ Acevedo who spent their young lives wreaking havoc on their neighborhoods and the law-abiding citizens who live there. It was the actions of these gang members, not the police officers, who set these unfortunate events in motion.

“Even though there have been several death threats to Anaheim police officers in gang neighborhoods throughout the city of Anaheim in the last year, our officers continue to go into these areas to fight gang crime and protect the residents who continue to live in fear of these domestic terrorists.”

“What’s going on here in Orange County is symbolic of a problem with the system,” Eduardo Perez, a 21-year-old student, told the Register. “This wouldn’t happen to white people. This is racism, simple as that.”

The demonstrations occurred just hours before a scheduled evening memorial service for Manuel Diaz, a 25-year-old man who was shot dead July 21. Police said Diaz, who had a criminal record, failed to heed orders and fled police. He was unarmed.

The Rev. Fr. Arturo Ferreras of St. Matthew Ecumenical Catholic Church in Orange urged the mourners – mostly residents of Anna Drive – to use Diaz’s death to work toward permanent, positive change in their community.

“We are gathered to let the world know we don’t want a community of violence on Anna Drive,” Ferreras told the mourners in Spanish as he presided over an ecumenical Catholic Mass. “We want our children to be able to grow up in peace. … Hopefully we will be able to make a better Anaheim and a better Anna Drive.”

Ferreras, who stood next to a 4-foot-tall Virgin of Guadalupe statue near where Diaz was shot, blessed the site where Diaz was killed and the children who witnessed what happened that day.

He also challenged young Anna Drive residents to become community activists and to use “democratic” channels to pursue change.

“2. Repeal the failed and hopeless War on Drugs by restricting the role of the federal government to assisting each state to enforce its chosen laws. Crime was reduced by more than 20 percent within one year after we pursued this course with the repeal of Alcohol Prohibition, and the same results will be realized when we finally repeal Drug Prohibition. People must be held accountable for their actions, instead of for what they put into their bodies. The War on Drugs has directly created an enormously large and lucrative black market that has corrupted institutions, people in all walks of life, and, most especially, children, here and all around the world. In addition, it has enabled the sale of illicit drugs to provide huge amounts of funding for terrorists. Our policy should be changed for specified drugs like marijuana to be strictly regulated for distribution to adults — and taxed — and users of other drugs should be allowed legal access to them under the strict supervision of medical professionals. Medical programs of this kind are successfully reducing crime, drug usage and health problems today in countries like Switzerland and Germany , and we can emulate their success.”

Truck owner wants DEA to pay up after botched sting
By Dane Schiller
Updated 08:20 p.m., Sunday, July 29, 2012
Craig Patty is seeking damages after his truck was used without his permission as part of a botched law-enforcement operation that left the driver dead.

“Your driver was shot in your truck,” said the caller, a business colleague. “Your truck was loaded with marijuana. He was shot eight times while sitting in the cab. Do you know anything about your driver hauling marijuana?”

While Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait is, thankfully, no Frank Rizzo, he tried his hand at tough-guy rhetoric at a press conference: “Vandalism, arson and other forms of violent protest will simply not be tolerated in our city. We don’t expect last night’s situation to be repeated but if it should be, the police response will be the same: swift and appropriate.”

Of course, we are all against violence, vandalism, and arson. Indeed, the mother of one of the victims poignantly called for calm. But it’s ridiculous to argue that the police response was appropriate. Tait—who at least called for an FBI investigation of the police shootings that triggered the incident—has failed to live up to the promises he made when he took over as the city’s mayor. Tait promised to foster a culture of “kindness” in the city. . Click here to go to article.

Tuesday, July 23, Gustavo Arrellano, reporter and editor for The OC Weekly joins Martha Montelongo, with John Seiler, Managing Editor at CalWatchDog.com, and Ben Boychuk, Associate Editor with City Journal.

We’ll speak with Arrellano about a story that has gotten very little public scrutiny despite the high number of fatal shootings in the past few years, involving Anaheim Police Department APD officers. The killings have been committed in a poor, low-income and predominantly Latino neighborhood, and have been ignored by the main stream media. But this past weekend, when an APD unit responded to a crowd of angry citizens who gathered to protest the fatal shooting earlier the same day, of unarmed Manuel “Stomper” Diaz, a rolling CBS News Camera caught APD police firing rubber bullets, and red-pepper balls, and unleashing a K9 into the crowd of men, women, children and babies.

There are similarities between this story and the Fullerton Police Department’s corrupt culture of criminal violence which this past June, resulted in a recall of three sitting City Council members .

Also on the program, Larry Sand, President ofCTEN, frequent contributor at L.A. Daily News, L.A. Times, City Journal, Union Watch, and more.

Almost half of CA’s budget goes to pay for Education, yet we’re at the bottom, or second from the bottom in results. The CA Teacher’s Union and all their bought and paid for politicians at all levels of government block any reforms, even the most narrowly tailored, that would modestly improve the chances for poor and lower middle class kids to have access to quality teachers and schools.

Two lawsuits have just been filed, to take on the teacher’s union, in the courts. Last week we talked with Larry Sand about one of two suits just recently filed.

This week, we’ll speak with Sand about the suit filed by Students Matter, a nonprofit founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch. The student plaintiffs in the case “attend school in four districts, though the complaint targets only two—Los Angeles Unified and Alum Rock Elementary Unified in San Jose.”

The video is a powerful 2:50 mins which includes footage of horrific images. Police officers are shooting at a stunned crowd which includes many women and children who are panicked, screaming, scrambling, fearing for their lives and for their children. You see the officers running up close range as they shoot at their victims, and herd them as if they were wild animals. The footage has the effect that the photo of Kelly Thomas’s face had. No report is going to justify what this crew of police did to the crowd of angry and scared citizens. It is very important that the public see this video, before and after they listen to the PR from the APD’s spokes person.

“On Sunday various groups, objecting to what looks a lot like an assassination by the cops, and what was a police induced riot later, held a protest at the Anaheim Police Headquarters…where was our would-be squishy-feely Assembly person for the 65th District, Sharon Quirk? I have no idea.”

OC Register news report and a photo slide show of the protestors on Sunday, following the Saturday of the APD Shooting of Manny “Stomper” Diaz. The protesters protested at the APD’s station, and several of them went into the building.

Police shooting almost causes riot
5 wmctv.com | Jul 23, 2012 4:57 AM PDT Updated: Jul 23, 2012 5:04 AM PDT
Attempts to rationalize actions by ADP and politicians speaking so as to quell the raging concerns by announcing that actions are being taken, that the dog being released into the crowd including a baby in a stroller, was an accident.

“[I] want to personally apologize for the police dog incident,” said Chief John Welter, of the Anaheim Police Department.

Welter says officers were trying to preserve the shooting scene. He said some known gang members joined the crowd and someone started throwing rocks and bottles.

Are there pictures taken at the scene of the rocks and the bottles the police claim the crowd was throwing at them. I can understand why the crowd would their plastic water bottles, as that was all they had to defend themselves.

On Sunday night Anaheim police shot and killed a suspected car thief late Sunday night in the 400 block of West Guinida Lane:[UPDATE: PHOTO OF BODY WITH GUN] Anaheim Police Department Kill Another Man After Day of Protests
By Amber Stephens Mon., Jul. 23 2012 at 11:00 AM |OCWeekly
Categories: Crime-iny
This link includes a photo produced by the APD of the suspect killed Sunday night, and it shows only his legs, and curiously, a gun on the grass right between the victim’s legs. Are we supposed to believe the gun fell there between his legs, on the grass, when they shot him down?

Tuesday, June 26, Stephen Downing, Retired Deputy Chief of Police, and 20 Year Vet with L.A.P.D., and an active voice with LEAP, joins Martha Montelongo, with Ben Boychuk, Associate Editor with City Journal.

High Speed Rail, Pubic Sector Unfunded Pension Liabilities, and Public Education are all huge costs with lots of waste, fraud and abuse. How does our policy of drugs compare to these other issues? Is it anywhere near as important?

What are the costs and benefits of our current policies? Can we do better?

Governor Brown’s Pro-tax initiative, submitted later, than other initiatives that have not yet been verified, is verified for the ballot, and California Forward‘s reform initiative is yet to be officially approved, pending signature verifications and certification. Coincidence? The deadline for all initiatives to go on the November General Election ballot is June 28th. It looks very suspicious.

The Government Performance and Accountability ActCalifornians need to know what they are getting for their tax dollars and what government is achieving. If approved by California voters through the ballot measure process, this proposal will position both state and local governments to effectively manage California’s fiscal affairs to promote concrete results Californians want and value for their tax dollars.

He started as a street cop and rose to deputy chief. Along the way, as commander of the Bureau of Investigations, he oversaw the Administrative Narcotics Division. Today, he insists that for the sake of cops, and in the interest of logic and public safety, the United States ought to legalize drugs, starting with marijuana.

Is he nuts? Is he a immoral? Unethical? Does he have no respect for law and order? Does he hate families? Does he not care about children and their safety and exposure to drugs and drug abuse? Why does he say what he says? Find out, tomorrow on Gadfly Radio, at 10 am. GadflyRadio.com

Related link:A former L.A. cop calls for legalizing drugs
‘Prohibition is not the answer and it will never be the answer, because it does not and will not work,’ says Stephen Downing. He favors legalizing, regulating and controlling illicit substances.
June 17, 2012|Steve Lopez

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The status quo of education in the U.S. is destructive to our Nation, and to ignore this truth is to be numb, unconscious or in denial of reality.

"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament."--A Nation At Risk - April 1983

Drug War Clock for Current Year

Police arrested an estimated 858,408 persons for cannabis violations in 2009. Of those charged with cannabis violations, approximately 89 percent were charged with possession only.
Source: Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation Your tax dollars at work--but for whom?

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Dedicated to considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness… "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth." --Plato on Socrates